When making a contribution to a national charity, have you
ever felt a nagging doubt, wondering what would happen to your money? Or
signing up to be a monthly sponsor of a child, struggling to survive in a
foreign land? Well, if you haven't, start now.

Take
Haiti, for instance. On 17 January
2010, having already been hit by four hurricanes in the previous decade, Haiti
suffered a mega earthquake that killed thousands and injured thousands more,
left a million homeless, destroyed crops, roads, and bridges. Appeals to help
this country of ten million were answered when dollars began pouring into aid
agencies.

Even before our media moved on to other news, television
screens showed gallons of bottled water stacked in cartons in row after row at
the airport at the precise time that Haitians were desperate for safe drinking
water. Just who was in charge here?

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Military in Control

It turned
out that this water was shipped in for use by armed troops who had arrived
right after the catastrophe. The military took control of the airports,
deciding which planes could land and which would have to wait. An attempt was
made to show that aid was being distributed by showing troops tossing out
packages of food in a hit or miss fashion from the back of a military vehicle
as it moved through a poor area.

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Haitians
were left to scramble for food and water, to erect makeshift shelters that
afforded minimum protection from the elements, to gain access to limited
medical treatment, and to live as best they could in unsanitary conditions that
fostered the dysentery that quickly spread throughout their camps.

Given the
history of how aid had previously been administered in Haiti were there real
prospects for a different outcome after this latest disaster?

In Travesty
in Haiti , Timothy
J. Schwartz reports on what he uncovered in his fifteen years of working in
Haiti for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), beginning in 1991. This
article focuses on food aid.

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Schwartz
writes of his shock at finding that food that had been shipped into the country
under the aegis, for example, of a well-known NGO -- CARE International -- was
routinely being sold at marketplaces throughout Haiti rather than being
distributed free to hungry Haitians. Perversely, during the growing season or
during recurring droughts, food aid was not available.

Any first
year economics student could predict the results of such a practice. With food
flooding into the markets, there was an ensuing drop in food prices that put
small peasant farmers out of business, forcing them sooner or later to seek
work in the cities.

Now retired and a writer, I am a feminist and political activist, a radical Democrat (have come to dislike the term "progressive"), and a blogger. Have done political tours of Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, West and East (way back when)Germany, (more...)